Bestselling author Liane Moriarty shares her latest novel with Tulsa and the world
Sometimes the most successful works of fiction are completely unplanned.
Just ask bestselling author Liane Moriarty, who openly admits she doesn’t plan her stories.
“I start with a premise and go from there,” Moriarty told a crowd of hundreds at a recent Magic City Books event at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa. It marked the author’s first visit to Oklahoma.
“I don’t have a particular structure,” conceded Moriarty. “It doesn’t fall perfectly into place. It’s a fun way to write, because I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it’s also scary, because I’m hoping something will happen.”
Though Moriarty writes chronologically, her freewheeling approach to plot means revisions will always be needed.
“Because of my lack of a plan, I do have things I go back and change. I use a ‘Things I Need to Fix’ document to guide that process.”
Longtime Moriarty fans used to her intricate brand of storytelling will not be disappointed with her new novel, Here One Moment, which takes fate and destiny as its themes.
According to Moriarty, the novel’s premise – a woman stands up on a plane and starts telling her fellow passengers how they will die – sprang from a flight of fancy she had while sitting through a long tarmac delay at Hobart Airport in Australian’s island state of Tasmania.
“My thoughts turned to death,” said Moriarty, a breast cancer survivor who also recently lost her father. “I started looking at the passengers around me. The cheerful thought came into my head that every single person on that plane would eventually die. I got off that plane with the premise for the novel.”
The eldest of six children, Moriarty has loved reading and writing since childhood. Though she built a successful career in advertising and marketing, the writing bug never left her. When her sister got a publishing deal, it was a wake-up call of sorts for Moriarty.
“I was fueled with a kind of rage,” she recalled with a laugh. “My sister had achieved my childhood dream. I felt a rush of sibling rivalry.”
That rush was enough to push Moriarty to finish her own first novel, Three Wishes, published in 2003. Now 57, Moriarty has written nine more novels since, including several that have been adapted for television.
The most notable of these adaptations – for Moriarty’s Big Little Lies – aired for two seasons on HBO and starred Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman. Moriarty visited the set during production – “a perk of the job” in her opinion – but was not involved in adapting her work during the first season.
“I wasn’t very involved at all,” she said. “ I already knew what was going to happen, so that would have been boring to me.”
For season two, however, Moriarty did supply a 50,000 word treatment that extended her original story beyond the events of the novel.
“I didn’t know how to give ideas without writing,” Moriarty admitted with a grin. “I took the opportunity to write a role for my favorite actress – Meryl Streep – which made the producers laugh. ‘You’ve become so Hollywood!’ they said. You’re like, ‘Get me, Meryl!’
“But they got her!” Moriarty added, to thunderous applause from the audience.
Moriarty revealed that an additional sequel to Big Little Lies is her next writing project. An Australian TV adaptation of her novel The Last Anniversary is also coming soon and will star Nicole Kidman.
As in all of her novels, which can take two years to write, Australia is the setting for Here One Moment.
“I will always set my books in Australia,” Moriarty said, “because I’ve lived there my whole life. I don’t have a strong sense of place. When I travel, I will remember people and things that were said but not the places. So Australia is the easiest for me to write because that’s where I am.”
Despite her reliance on familiar settings, Moriarty hopes readers will continue to find new things to enjoy in her stories.
“Some people have thoughtful reactions,” Moriarty said. “Some are just flipping pages. I’m happy with both, so whatever you take from it is wonderful.”
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